BOSTON — Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown has looked unstoppable at times early in the 2025-26 season. He's led the C's in scoring in 11 of their 14 games thus far, including on Sunday afternoon when the Green Team prevailed 121-118 over the Los Angeles Clippers. Despite averaging a career-high 27.4 points per game while shooting a career-high 50.5% from the floor, Brown isn't satisfied.

In fact, he was disappointed with his performance against L.A.

“My team counts on me to play a little bit better, and tonight I didn't really play that well,” Brown admitted.

In 38 minutes of play, Brown notched a team-high 33 points while grabbing a game-high 13 rebounds. That doesn't sound like a bad game because even though the four-time All-Star missed 19 of his 33 attempts from the field, he was at his best when it mattered.

Brown played the entire fourth quarter and scored a team-high 13 points to go along with seven rebounds and two steals in that span. He converted on 45.5% of his attempts in the final frame and was only outdone by Clippers star James Harden, who had 18 of his 37 points in the fourth quarter.

The Celtics led by as many as 24 points in the third quarter, but Harden cut that advantage to just three points following three free throws off an untimely foul from Celtics wing Jordan Walsh. In response, Brown called for the ball on the other end and finished a dunk over Harden to give Boston a 117-112 lead with 14 seconds remaining.

Article Continues Below

L.A. rallied again, yet Harden's potential game-tying triple with less than a second left in the contest could not go down. Boston improved to 7-7 on the season, and Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla commended his star player after the narrow win.

“The only thing he cares about is winning,” Mazzulla told ClutchPoints. “And so he's finding a great balance of putting us into position to win, empowering his teammates, and doing what he needs to do in games for us to give us a shot… 13 [points] in the fourth quarter, at the same time playing defense, getting steals. All he cares about is winning and going about it the right way. And that's a credit to him.”

While Brown is averaging the 12th most points per game in the NBA (and all 11 players above him have played more minutes), he still sees room for growth.

“I'm looking forward to the next two games to kind of bounce back, but great win overall,” he said.

Those next two games will come against the 2-11 Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday night and Friday night, giving the Celtics a chance to go over .500 for the first time this season.